How does Gross National Happiness offer an integrated perspective linked with health, economics, and nature?

Abstract

In this paper, my interest is in drawing out what is distinctive about the Gross National Happiness (GNH) experiment in Bhutan, and how this distinctiveness offers parallels with holistic health traditions. I explore how a full appreciation of what GNH has to offer requires more than replacing economic growth with well-being but points to a reorientation in economic thinking and practice. In so doing, I hope to shed light on how GNH offers an integrated perspective linked with health, economics, and nature.

Keywords

• Gross national happiness
• Well-being economics
• Phenomenology
• Ayurveda
• Traditional Chinese medicine
• Epistemology